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ACCOMPLISHMENTS

PEOPLE

RESOURCES

In 2002, the selection of

California State University, Northridge and three other institutions to participate in the Teachers for a New Era signaled an urgent response to the inability of American higher education to prepare qualified teachers consistently. Eventually eleven universities were invited to join this effort at reform.

The lack of confidence in the role of universities is understandable, since the maze of pathways around and through preparation programs undermines coherence, as Lee Shulman has said, and as A Nation At Risk documented in 1983. (See the pathways chart, pp. 13, in the Math and Science Critical Pathways study.) Poorly educated pupils, taught by marginally qualified teachers, graduate from public P-12, threatening the nation's pre-eminence in the global knowledge economy.

Assessing Evidence: improving preparation programs, teaching strategies, and teacher support on the basis of valid and reliable evidence mainly of pupil learning.

Creating Strong Clinical Practice and Induction: insuring that P-12 setting and the university curriculum align and indeed overlap so that theory and practice reinforce one another.

Engaging the Arts and Sciences with Education: making teacher preparation--and pupil learning--everyone's responsibility because teacher candidates must learn not just subject matter but how to make subject matter teachable. The "two cultures" must align practices and principles for candidates to experience a coherent program.